.xls template for tracking net worth
Or: ANP is a robot
Behold! The powers of .xls in the hands of ANP!
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I am highly motivated to never again live in a home with carpeting so bare that its holes resemble that of a golf course. I also refuse to assume that I’ll marry, let alone to a man whose earning power is at least on par with mine. But I also want to make sure I can provide a good home to myself and my future (possibly foster) children.
As a result, for the past couple of years I’ve been diligently monitoring my liquid assets and net worth. The process has resulted in me making fairly sound long-term financial decisions that occasionally have made me wince in the short term, such as:
- Selling my car
- Jumping back into equities
- Reallocating funds in my retirement portfolio
However, operationalizing said process has been challenging for me, but I think I’ve settled into a workable solution:
- At the onset of each calendar year, determine financial goals (liquid assets & net worth) for year N+1
- Straight-line forecast from T=now to T=(year N+1) and plot monthly goals into calendar
- Ensure that bills get paid and accounts get updated no more than 3 business days prior to the “forecasted financial goals” date
- When planned day for each month rolls around, go through all financial accounts and track
- If ahead of goals, plow through shopping wishlist, travel ideas, and/or take self to the spa
The hard parts have been as follows:
- against point 3 (above): Paying bills takes FOREVER
- against point 4: I’ve been scribbling my account information into a journal mostly intended for literary mewlings which often ends up missing
- against point 4: I pay a lot of business expenses out of pocket and the “float” confuses the “how much I actually owe” issue
- against point 5: I live in Manhattan and pay $2,200/month for rent which makes progress towards my goal of joining the likes of the land-owning gentry difficult
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So I’ve now moved from a box-and-one (hoops reference! alert to Dorie!) to a full court press and am handling these difficulties as follows:
- re: the immediately preceding point 1 >> Considering asking a trusted recent grad with impeccable ethics to pay bills on my behalf for $
- re: point 2 >> I just built a very nerdlette-y .xls file to track my net worth
- re: point 3 >> I am going to shift all my personal spend an AmEx Platinum (yet to be approved for, but hey, details!) and business spend across my BofA Plat, USAA Visa, and AmEx Corporate so that I have better visibility into the dimension of the “float”
- re: point 4 >> Change goals. Who needs to own? Let’s move to Astoria, Oregon.
I diagree with your methodology. It is too much pressure to fill in an XLS every month and the constant realization that you’re falling behind will be discouraging. I prefer to analyze my net worth on an occasional basis then calculate an annualized return based on the number of elapsed days since the prior spreadsheet.
Also the whole thing should be in a Google Doc so its web-friendly.
Have you seen networthiq.com? Kind of fun, but may not be detailed enough for what you are looking for.
2,200 a month? I pay 2g for a 4 bedroom *house* in SF.
Money is tough for me too, especially with the business spend. I have 2 cards and a single bank account. I don’t invest, so savings is cash. Bank account is bills, and I just use outlook to track. 1 card is personal, the other I use for business. That and I push for the cash advance and guilt trip my finance guys.
Anyways I’ll try your excel.
Planning ahead… what a concept!
ANP! (holding letter sweater) YOU GOONIE!!! (echo: goonie, oonie, eee)